


Speak

by SquaryQ



Series: They Exchanged A Smile - Anxious Babies - MultiFandom [3]
Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Body Positivity, ED Recovery, Eating Disorder Awareness, Eating Disorder Awareness Week, Eating Disorders, F/F, Insecurities, Panic, Public Speaking, Self-Love, Speaking out, Worry, body love, performance anxiety, trigger warning eating disorder, tw eating disorder, unspecified eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-09 19:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8909323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaryQ/pseuds/SquaryQ
Summary: When Nozomi is recruited to speak out as a member of Muse, to advocate for self-love and preach about loving yourself, she can't help but agree in a heartbeat, despite her dread.





	1. TRIGGER WARNING

**Author's Note:**

> I won't lie to you, I was looking in the mirror yesterday after my shower and realised how much my stretch marks seemed to have faded in a year and began to remember how I felt about them and wrote a few oneshot pitches to vent a bit.  
> LOVE YOUR BODIES PEOPLES! YOUR BODIES ARE BEAUTIFUL ^3^
> 
> Edited For ED Awareness Week 2k18!

This is an important trigger warning. 

In this fanfiction, an eating disorder is actively referenced, although it is not named. 

I wrote this piece to advocate for self-love and decided that the perfect time to improve it would be now as it is Eating Disorder Awareness Week. 

 

If you are suffering from an Eating Disorder in the UK, please, for help, contact Beat. 

Helpline:

0808 801 0677 

Youthline: 

0808 801 0711

 

Please read with caution and stay safe 

 


	2. Speak

_“You’re beautiful Nozomi,” Eli had said, cupping her best friend’s face in her hands._

_“But this isn’t beautiful!” Nozomi retorted, glaring furiously at her body._

_“Your perception is distorted! I don’t see anything ugly in you!” Eli protested, latching onto her._

_“Look again, Elicchi.”_

 

Nozomi didn’t know why she remembered that then, she was about to speak up on stage as a school idol and advocate for self-love. Not remember her own dark days. She had prepared a speech but as she rehearsed it, it seemed false and wrong, and that only made the ever-tightening knot in her stomach worse. There was something off about this speech; something too perfect and smooth for an actual person to say.

 

Nozomi began to pace.

 

"I can't do this..." she muttered, crumpling up her cue-cards.

 

Idols were real people! They had feelings and insecurities... But it seemed that they also had a right as people in the public eye to be advocates for many things.

 

Especially School Idols, after all they were there to show people that human beings are human beings. They weren't meant to ever be perfectly polished. Even though Nico-chan was determined to always be on point, she would never be to professional standard all of the time. 

 

She sat down, running her fingers through one of her twin tails, braiding it to give her hands something to do - anything to do. 

 

She sighed, Honoka-chan had said that Muse should speak out about things that meant a lot to them, though she wasn't the one who started this particular cycle. That was Kotori. 

 

Kotori-chan was helping run workshops to teach younger kids how to sew and the other members of Muse began to follow suit; Umi-chan had been talking about nerves on YouTube, and confiding in a computer screen about her former doubts about being a member of Muse, actively weighing up the perks of the experiences she had had by taking such a risk. Rin-chan and Hanayo-chan had been working with charities and raising awareness about stereotypes and bullying from time to time. Maki-chan was advocating too, talking about how nobody should determine your path for you. Honoka was doing talks about confidence, ambition and chasing dreams. Though her childhood friends had snidely remarked that Muse was more of a phenomenon and not something that could easily be replicated. 

 

Then. Then there was the Third Years. Oh the third years had been busy. Nozomi's friends and classmates were in the spotlight whenever they weren't in class, studying or rehearsing at this point. It was serene that people wanted to hear what they thought about topics. Hell, Nozomi remembered the first time the Third Years had been invited to speak, independently from Muse. It was on a talk show as part of a web-series. A-Rise had featured in this series when they were all in their First Year and due to such Muse's Third Year triad had been honoured. But so nervous. They never let go of each other's hands through the entire experience. 

 

Nozomi, unfortunately, seemed to be unable to get rid of her nerves. While Elicchi and Nico-chan shrugged them off like a cardigan. 

 

Slowly but surely, Elicchi and Nico-chan left Nozomi behind, chasing organisations and concepts they felt strongly about to advocate for. Nozomi, like Umi, found herself talking about nerves a lot, but on a personal blog. But it wasn't the same as what her friends were doing. Nowhere near as glamorous.

 

Nozomi remembered when Elicchi had been contacted by an organisation to promote positivity and equality for immigrants. As she had spent her childhood growing up on Russian soil and had to adjust to being back in Japan, Elicchi was more than willing to lend a hand to the cause. Nico-chan, too, had been doing shows as a soloist and a representative of Muse to try and bring joy to kids that couldn't afford tickets to Love Live! to watch idols in the flesh. Sometimes, she even went to the lengths of going to hospitals in outrageous clothes and sang and danced for hours. Nico-chan claimed once in an interview that she did this because she knew how it was. 

 

She never elaborated on that point, but Nozomi, like the rest of Muse, knew. Nico-chan lost her father a few years earlier. Back before her mother knew she was pregnant with the youngest of the four Yazawa children, Kotaro. Cocoro and Cocoa struggled to remember their father and poor Kotaro never got to meet him. And in a bid to support all four children on her own, Mrs Yazawa was always working. Nico-chan came from a very poor background, and now she was on the road to being an international sensation. 

 

Nozomi continued to pace as she wrung her hands. At that moment everything seemed to feel wrong. Her breath hitched as she glanced at the clock mounted on the wall. 

 

“Our next speaker is Tojo Nozomi-chan of the school idol group Muse!”

 

Taking a deep breath, Nozomi stepped onto the stage, her glistening mauve hair bouncing behind her as she ascended a small step and looks out at the audience who wait for her. Her knees began to buckle as she stood behind a podium. 

 

Her emerald eyes sought out her dear friend Elicchi, who had accompanied her without question. She did so by impulse, not even seeming to think about it. Fixated on the blonde girl in the navy blue dress, Nozomi took a breath.

 

“Hello everyone! My name is Tojo Nozomi and three years ago I struggled with loving myself.”

 

She cursed herself internally. Her voice was shaking. 

 

Nozomi closed her eyes and took a deep breath after doing a mini-fist-pump beneath the podium, despite sounding wobbly, word-wise she had started well. Winging this would probably be a mistake but there was no use trying to go back on her words now and start the false speech about how self love is a journey to divinity and acceptance. It was bullshit. And she knew from the moment Umi handed her the sheet of paper with a speech drafted onto it that every word that would leave her lips would be false and wrong.

 

She runs her clammy hands across the bottom of her polka-dotted skirt. “At the start of my second year of High School, I wanted to get Nico-chan to carry on chasing her dreams of being a School Idol. I was a second year who was following Elicchi into the minefield that is student government and a second year who hated how she looked in her school uniform. I thought my blouses were too tight and the sweater I would wear with them only helped cover the wide gaps from straining buttons over my bust. But as it covered that it made my stomach look pudgy and gross. I was a second year and was doing a bunch of crazy diets. I was a second year in a bad place... I was a second year in High School and I developed an eating disorder.”

 

What was she DOING? Nozomi's mouth seemed to be running on auto-pilot, babbling on and on but she hadn't spoken once about self-love, body positivity or anything like that. She paused, chewing on her lip, gaze still fixed on Elicchi. 

 

The crowd was silent, many prying eyes searching for fellow members of Muse here to support Nozomi at this talk. Very few found Eli. But those who did could see the tears brimming on her waterline as she listened to her best friend discuss the bad patch she had once been in.

 

_“You’re beautiful Nozomi,” Eli had said, cupping her best friend’s face in her hands._

_“But this isn’t beautiful!” Nozomi retorted, glaring furiously at her body._

_“Your perception is distorted! I don’t see anything ugly in you!” Eli protested, latching onto her._

_“Look again, Elicchi.”_

 

Nozomi’s breath hitched as she remembered that conversation for the second time that day. She looked out at the crowd of young adults with bright shining eyes, wishing to be motivated by the supportive words of an idol.

 

“I hated myself.”

 

Nozomi took another shallow and shaky breath and continues to speak, “I hated my bust, I hated my curves. I hated that I didn’t have a thigh gap in all angles like Elicchi. I hated having to do gym with the thinner girls. It made me feel gross. Looking at the stretch marks which scarred my body made me feel gross. I wanted to be smaller. I wanted to be thinner. I hated everything about my body. Elicchi had to stop me before I hurt myself.”

 

The tears begin to fall from Eli’s eyes like blossoms from trees as she listened Nozomi speak, hanging onto every word and innocently wondering how much she would tell these impressionable young people in the crowd about her issues with her image.

 

“Elicchi saw something which wasn’t a gross blob. She saw one of the muses of Greece in my curves. She saw beauty in the body I hated so much. She saw more. But what was most important, is that she could see that I was losing myself in an obsession over weight and food. She told me I needed to get help. And when I refused, she made me... I went to inpatient recovery treatment for the majority of my second year of High School. Elicchi and her family helped me pay for it. She said she saw so many friends in ballet's souls, their spirits, their happiness die as their bodies withered away. She told me about a dancer who died, and at her dance school, six of her classmates ended up with eating disorders so severe they couldn't dance anymore.The doctors said I was lucky because I had taken the initiative to fix this before I got really bad. Really really bad. But I didn't get back to school til really late, around exam times..." 

 

Elicchi sat there in the stands, sobbing, pawing at her tears, smiling with quivering lips. Desperately trying to look like she was proud and not heartbroken about what her best friend had been saying. 

 

“It took me until I joined Muse to be happier with myself…” she pauses, rubbing her eyes, grateful that she had refused the mascara that hair and make-up had tried to cake onto her lashes.

 

"Muse celebrates different people, different personalities, different bodies. I look at my fellow School Idols and do not compare their sizes to my own in the same way I used to, no instead, I see that each of the girls in Muse, is like one of the artistic inspirations found in Ancient Greece. We are all wonderful..." 

 

Back in the stands, Elicchi hiccuped, still weeping over the powerful words coming from her best friend's lips. 

  
"I'm never going to tell you recovery is easy. Or that it isn't a slippery slope. But it IS worth it. Being on this stage is worth it. Being alive, breathing, kicking, singing, dancing, performing, speaking. This is worth it. All of us are worth this. Please, if you're struggling, speak to someone. Get help, you deserve to be here, and you are loved. I love you. Elicchi loves you. Nico-chan loves you. Muse love you." Nozomi exclaims, tears streaming down her cheeks. She smiles brightly at the crowd and Eli jumps out of her seat, applauding her best friend until her hands are sore, red and burning. She cries with pride and continues to applaud.

 

“We love you Nozomi!” someone shouts.

 

“Nozomi! Nozomi! Nozomi!” the crowd chanted in unison.

 

Nozomi waved to the crowd, smiling. Her throat, however was tightening, and the knot in her stomach was so painful she felt she would pass out. She could feel her legs beginning to cave, so she clutched onto the podium with her free hand. 

 

Oblivious to Nozomi's plight onstage, Eli smiled, bolting out of the mass of people in the stands to hug her. Running toward the stage and darting past security the blonde leapt into her best friend’s arms, beaming with sheer elation.

 

"I'm so proud of you." 

 

Nozomi's erratic breathing and hammering heart kept her from speaking. Instead, she nodded. Elicchi put her arm around her best friend and took her backstage.

 

One of the stage-hands gave the mauve-haired idol a glass of water. She slowly began to sip it. 

 

"D-d-did I do okay?" 

 

"Nozomi, I'm so proud of you!" Eli said, giving her clammy hand a squeeze. 

 

The pair shared a smile. Though weak on Nozomi's part, as she tried to ease her panic. Eli continues to smile at her best friend. 

 

She was here. She was alive. And she was speaking out. They smiled again. 


End file.
